Up works on so many levels too. It really will please everyone from 9 to 90, and for completely different reasons. Kids will have a rollicking good time, I promise, but so will their parents and grandparents. I don’t know that I’ve ever seen a movie that so effectively managed to weave a kid-friendly popcorn flick around adult themes. This isn’t merely a movie for the young-at-heart, where a senior citizen may enjoy the light-heartedness of a well-done children’s picture like Aladdin. It’s a movie for the old-at-heart who prefer adult stories with deep themes. Despite the improbable physics and cartoon animals, there’s a very serious story here that people too young to vote just aren’t going to notice unless they come back and watch it again in 20 or 30 years.

One small but impressive detail: where many movie previews pretty much spoil the story and all the surprises, Up’s definitely didn’t. As much as you may have heard from previews and posters and reviews, until you’ve actually seen the movie, chances are you only know about 5-10% of what actually happens. I guess that’s the reward for producing movies that are so consistently good. Moviegoers will buy the product without much of a taste first, and they will be rewarded.

I don’t know what they put in the water over at Pixar to keep the talent churning out such great films with such regularity. I keep waiting for a bad one, but even at their worst (Cars) Pixar films are still completely watchable; and at their best (Ratatouille) they’re some of the best movies ever made.

Go see Up. You won’t be disappointed.

Lots of folks and critics seem to have liked this movie, and indeed liked it more than almost any other Star Trek movie/episode; and that’s the key point. The people who never liked or cared about Star Trek before, didn’t really notice or care what Abrams just did to the characters and universe they grew up with. They just admired the modern special effects, the well-plotted action, and the better-than-the-original-series acting. But those of us who did love Star Trek since 1966 because we had been able to see beyond the bad makeup and the occasionally corny dialog to the real heart of the show? We walked out of the movie with a very bad taste in our mouths that for once didn’t come from the popcorn. Spoilers follow.

At first I thought the destruction of ****** and the death of ******* ****** (if you’ve seen the movie you know what I’m talking about. If not, I won’t spoil it.) were necessary. Suddenly what had been a ho-hum experience, as prequels usually are, picked up. There was real tension. After all, if they could do that in complete contravention to everything we knew about the Star Trek universe from the original series on, then absolutely anything could happen. In fact, that’s probably why Abrams wrote that into the script in the first place. And since it was done with an appropriate amount of time travel, it wasn’t a complete retcon.

However, I kept waiting for another bit of time travel to reverse the problem, much like Picard and crew went back in time to reverse the Borg takeover of Earth in the single greatest Star Trek movie ever made (though I won’t argue too hard if you prefer Wrath Of Khan). In fact, I don’t think that’s the first or last time we’ve seen a double time travel restore of the future. (Bonus points for anyone who can list all the episodes in which this occurred.) Unfortunately, the expected reversion of the disaster never happened; and while that’s in some ways more realistic, it also means that Abrams just threw five series, 10 movies, and years of people’s lives and work in the garbage. Rodenberry, Barrett, Okuda, Berman, Stewart, Shatner, Doohan, and too many others to name deserved better than that.

Abrams has pretty much eliminated 5 of the 6 Star Trek TV series from continuity, pretty much everything after Enterprise. Picard never left France if he was born at all. The Borg are still in the Delta Quadrant. Harry Mudd probably died in a Klingon jail. The Death of Tasha Yar? Unlikely. The Dominion War? The Maquis? Voyager’s trip to the Delta Quadrant? Deep Space 9? Never happened. Reunification? Pretty much impossible now, I’d say. In fact, if we take the events in the movie to their logical conclusion, the Federation is going to lose at least one and probably the first of the upcoming wars with the Klingons. Earth’s going to be a Klingon colony. The Alpha quadrant is going to be split up between Klingons, Romulans, Cardassians, and Ferengi.

Yes, there were some cheesy episodes over the years. (Half-naked Aryan joggers anyone?) No series can extend for hundreds of episodes and 40 years without hitting an occasional wrong note. But there was a lot more good than bad, and all of that is now just a distant memory. In the Star Trek universe, they’re not even that. Abrams should have left Kirk and crew in peace and gone forward instead of back. If Star Trek taught us anything over the years, it’s that we need to look forwards to the future, not backwards to the past. A new series or movie set 10 years after Voyager might even have been able to do this particular story without stomping all over established future history. Or if one had to go back and revisit the characters we all remember, it would have been better to wait 50 years, and then do an Ultimate Spider-Man or Sandman Mystery Theatre like reboot of the entire franchise that didn’t take place in the same universe. But this? This is the ultimate fuck you to the people who’ve kept Star Trek Alive for more than four decades.

I’d seen a lot of previews for this flick over the last few months, and I’m pleased to say they really didn’t give anything away, though they did give a good feel for the movie. Creating a good preview is relatively hard, and they pulled it off. Without actually lying about what the movie was like or about, the preview still left you quite unaware of what you were getting into. I won’t spoil it for you, but do see it if you get the chance. It’s worth the $9.

Unfortunately there really wasn’t time to do both stories in 90 minutes or so. This story might have been better done as a TV series (Heroes?). But what really killed it in the end was a cliché that has lost all force.

In fact, the cliché has become so common and so predictable that I can’t imagine that I’m spoiling anything for you by telling you that two of the main characters die at the end. And then magically wake up 30 seconds later. I mean, how many times have we seen this? Are movie directors so desperate that they can’t think of a better climax? And it’s not like movie goers over the age of twelve are at all surprised or moved by this trick any more. I think the last time it actually worked may have been E.T. over 20 years ago. Can’t we just quit?

These days, if a movie wanted to do something really shocking, it would leave the characters dead. But maybe Hollywood thinks we’re all such whiny crybabies they can’t get away with anything less than a happy ending. It’s not just Hollywood either. CJ7 was completely spoiled by a last-minute back from the dead scene that even Spielberg would have been embarrassed by.

There’s a closely related cliché in which the villain pretends to be dead, and then comes back for one last swipe at the hero. This variant should have ended with Fatal Attraction in 1987. And then there’s the closely related, “The hero lets the villain live but the villain tries to shoot the hero in the back so the hero kills him instead.” That one should have been retired after Star Trek III.

I guess the more movies I see in my life, the more I come to realize that most directors and writers just aren’t that creative or original. The last really original movie I saw was, I think, Borat. Before that, maybe Winged Migration? There’ve been a few others here and there with good stories, but when’s the last time you saw a genuinely new idea come out of Hollywood? I know really new ideas are rare, but can’t we at least call for a moratorium on the worst of the old ideas?

However the basic rule for these sorts of movies is that they need to move so fast that you don’t have time to notice all the holes in the plot. Tomb of the Dragon Emperor didn’t quite achieve sufficient speed to lift off. Just when you thought it would; there’d be a long boring sequence that gave you time to catch your breath and start laughing at how silly the whole thing was. If you haven’t seen it yet, don’t bother. It’s not worth the $10.

As everyone already knows, Heath Ledger was incredible as The Joker, and Christian Bale once again blew chunks. (Why no actor has ever been able to voice Batman properly, I have no idea; but in my head I just never heard him talking in some funky whisper. Batman has a strong, authoritative, commanding voice. It’s Bruce Wayne who disguises his voice, not Batman.) Nonetheless, it’s a really good movie. Go see it.

The reason I waited so long was that I wanted to see it in IMAX. I heard that it had been specially designed and shot for IMAX, and that it would really take advantage of the medium. Wow, was that wrong.

The simple fact is the IMAX screen was way too big for this picture. IMAX wants lots of spectacular outdoor shots that encompass large vistas and have three different things happening on the screen at once. Think Star Wars II; Attack of the Clones or some of the great nature pictures that have been done in IMAX over the years. However, despite all the explosions, The Dark Knight is really an internal picture. The focus is more often than not on characters’ faces, and action more often than not takes place indoors in cramped spaces. Even outdoor scenes are usually in the lower-Manhattan-inspired concrete caverns of Gotham City. There’s just not enough movie there to fill a screen this big.

As a story, The Dark Knight works. The Joker looks genuinely crazy, but does it matter whether his face is 2 meters high or 20? And the Joker comes off better than most because his makeup makes him look less human. With their faces blown up to 20 meters, normal folks like Maggie Gyllenhaal, Michael Caine, Morgan Freeman, etc. all just end up looking grotesque.

I didn’t think I’d ever say this, but this movie cries out for a smaller screen; not necessarily one of the postage stamp sizes you find in the shoeboxes of an excessively subdivided old theater, but at least a more normal multiplex venue. When half the movie takes place on characters’ faces, you need a screen that’s a little closer to life-size.

Of course I could only be talking about Hellboy II.

(Yes, I know there was some other big comic book movie opening last night with some dude with ears and a cape, but the lines for that looked a little long. )

I vaguely remember the first Hellboy movie as mildly amusing, but I couldn’t tell you what happened in it or why. But Hellboy II. Wow. This was a stunning movie, especially visually. Guillermo del Toro is to the movies what Julie Taymor is to live theater. The vision and creativity on display in the characters, costumes, and sets and even plot just made it apparent how boring and repetitive most superhero movies are.

Sci-fi, fantasy, and comic book movies have really gotten stuck in a rut for the last 20 years. You’d think CGI would have enabled directors to realize more of their visions, but instead it’s only made clear just how limited those visions are. Superhero comic books have grown by leaps and bounds over the last 20 years (Watchmen, Dark Knight Returns, Swamp Thing, Powers, The Authority, Sandman) but movies mostly haven’t followed. The special effects are better, but there’s nothing in Superman Returns, Iron Man, or The Incredible Hulk that couldn’t have been written in 1968.

By all means see Hellboy II on the big screen. It deserves it. Don’t worry if you missed the first movie. The sequel stands on its own. But whatever you do, see it.

The defining characteristic of the first book was a deep sense of mystery. You really didn’t have any clear idea what was going on, just what all these demons were, who were the good guys and who were the bad guys, or pretty much anything else. You certainly didn’t know what dust was, or what was happening in the arctic. You usually heard about most things chapters (sometimes books) before you actually figured out what they were.

By contrast, the movie started with 60 seconds of narration that laid out the answers to pretty much every question in the story so everyone could understand exactly hat was going on from the very first frame. I suppose the producers thought the story was too deep and confusing for American audiences raised on moral pablum like Star Wars and accustomed to the ethical complexity of professional wrestling.

If there’s been clearer evidence in recent years of the relative maturity of the British and American peoples, I can’t think of it. In Britain these books are considered classics of children’s literature, and perhaps second in popularity only to Harry Potter. In America, they’re relatively unknown; and considered wildly too complex and controversial even for most adults. Maybe one day America will be ready for stories like these, but apparently not in Generation Z.

Of course, the movie had the obligatory, girl-goes-to-abortion-clinic-but-decides-not-to-go-through-with-it-at-the-last-minute scene. Otherwise it mostly avoided clichés. At least it didn’t go with the usual television cop-out of Juno magically discovering she wasn’t pregnant after all.

Still, just once I’d like to see a movie about a teenage girl who gets knocked up, has an abortion, and lives happily ever after, just like thousands of real teenagers do every year. We have all the other standard plots almost every year:

• Single woman gets pregnant and has a shotgun wedding (Knocked Up, Riding in Cars with Boys, The Simpsons, Roseanne, Nine Months)
• Single woman raises child on her own (Where the Heart Is, Baby Boom, The Opposite of Sex).
• Single woman gives child away for adoption (Juno. More common on television where it’s a recurring plot on virtually any nighttime soap that last for more than a year. Interestingly, the protagonists of the series are almost always the prospective adoptive parents, never the birth parents. Disposable characters are introduced to play that role.)

In fact the most common plot of all is probably the least realistic: “Single woman gets pregnant and someone other than the father falls in love with her and marries her.” (Look Who’s Talking, Home Fries)

Why is the most likely scenario so toxic that it can’t be touched? Talk to any nurse who’s worked in a college health office, and they’ll give you the real story on the ratio of completed to terminated pregnancies. (Catholic universities are no exception: they just refer students to off-campus obgyns so the school doesn’t have to know exactly what’s going on.) The last American movie I can remember that dealt plausibly with teenage abortion was Fast Times at Ridgemont High, and that was in 1982. Possibly they got away with it because it was a semi-documentary. I suppose you could count The Cider House Rules, but that’s not really in the same genre. Even Citizen Ruth copped out with a miscarriage. Isn’t it time for a movie that treats teenage pregnancy mildly realistically?

It was also obvious that as good as digital animation has gotten, it still doesn’t hold a candle to real film. Beowulf was better than Final Fantasy, but still didn’t compare well to movies shot with real actors, even digital effect heavy movies like Star Wars I-III. Even more tellingly, Beowulf didn’t compare all that well to the old Harryhausen films: the monsters are better (Grendel was fabulous) but the humans are so much worse. I wonder how long it will be before we can finally render animatronic humans that are indistinguishable from real humans on the screen?